Author Archives: Muriel Salvan

About Muriel Salvan

I am a freelance project manager and polyglot developer, expert in Ruby and Rails. I created X-Aeon Solutions and rivierarb Ruby meetups. I also give trainings and conferences on technical topics. My core development principles: Plugins-oriented architectures, simple components, Open Source power, clever automation, constant technology watch, quality and optimized code. My experience includes big and small companies. I embrace agile methodologies and test driven development, without giving up on planning and risks containment methods as well. I love Open Source and became a big advocate.

How to read one non-blocking key press in Ruby

During the development of a simple command line game in Ruby, I wanted to check if the player has pressed a given key in a non-blocking and buffered way. That is: If no key was pressed, don’t wait for one … Continue reading

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I ventured in Tamriel with The Elder Scrolls Online

I just got the chance to participate to last week-end Elder Scrolls Online Beta session. Woot! That was awesome to get back to Tamriel, and I enjoyed it both as a gamer and a developer/tester 😉 I won’t go into … Continue reading

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Rails cluster with Ruby load balancer using Docker

Lately I discovered Docker. I made a quick presentation on it for the rivierarb meetup of february 2014 (slides available). As an example of Docker’s usage, I decided to make something cool: a Rails cluster, with a Ruby load balancer … Continue reading

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Install Ruby 1.9.3 on a shared hosting non root

I’ve got through a bit of a hurdle to get Ruby 1.9.3 installed on my shared host. My host is PlanetHoster, but this walkthrough should work with any host giving you a decent development suite (gcc, ld, make…), like 1and1, … Continue reading

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Serialize Ruby objects: ruby-serial

Many times I have come across the need to serialize a whole bunch of Ruby objects, with all their references. This is often useful to save the state of a program at one point, and retrieve it later in another … Continue reading

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A quick message queue benchmark: ActiveMQ, RabbitMQ, HornetQ, QPID, Apollo…

Lately I performed a message queue benchmark, comparing several queuing frameworks (RabbitMQ, ActiveMQ…). Those benchmarks are part of a complete study conducted by Adina Mihailescu, and everything was presented at the April 2013 riviera.rb meet-up. You should definitely peek into … Continue reading

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Monitor your systems using Monit on shared hosts non-root – Example with Rails3/Capistrano

Do you know Monit? You definitely should. This is a high-quality and mature Open Source project, very well documented, that can monitor all your system resources (global and process-based). It is lightweight, efficient, can take corrective actions (restart servers…), provides … Continue reading

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Deploy Rails 3 Unicorn applications using Capistrano on a shared web host non-root

In my struggle to have complete Rails3 environments setup in shared web hosts, the deployment step was missing. Lately I managed to deploy Rails3 Unicorn applications using Capistrano on a shared web host, as a non-root user with very limited … Continue reading

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Installing Rails 3 nginx unicorn on a shared web host non-root

Lately I tried to install a complete Rails 3 nginx unicorn web stack on a shared host without root privileges, in my user home directory. Ruby and Rails3 setup nginx setup Unicorn setup Unicorn setup with nginx In this process, … Continue reading

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How to install custom ROM on Asus TF300TG Transformer Pad

Lately, I received a TF300TG Asus Transformer Pad, shipping with a stock Asus JellyBean (Android 4.1.1) OS. It is awesome, reactive, playful, efficient, has 3G connectivity with a SIM card slot… but does not have broadband telephony feature! So I … Continue reading

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